


In Thirteen Dimensions

by AyeAyeAye



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode Fix-It: s04e08 Silence in the Library, Episode: s04e08 Silence in the Library, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Heart of the TARDIS, Hurt/Comfort, Meddling TARDIS, Mostly Gen, POV TARDIS, Temporary Character Death, The TARDIS Cares, The TARDIS Tries, Timey-Wimey, the TARDIS is morally-grey, the TARDIS is sentient, third person though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:55:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29749458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyeAyeAye/pseuds/AyeAyeAye
Summary: The TARDIS is not alive in the way he is; she is the not fumbling hands and the schisms of his spiderwebbing across the space time.But she is alive all the same, feels all at once.OR: The TARDIS sees all of the space-time at once. She explores the possibilities of saving River.
Relationships: River Song & The Doctor's TARDIS, The Doctor & The Doctor's TARDIS, The Doctor/River Song
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	In Thirteen Dimensions

The TARDIS is not alive in the way he is; she is the not fumbling hands and the schisms of his spiderwebbing across the space time. 

She is not, further, like the stars she sees he cares for so much. They burn and burn in their own time, and then they fade, because they are linear, and the thief knows this enough to let their timeline rest once they collapse. They are singularity, tiny threads arcing short and barely warm. 

But there she is, alive all the same. It is an endless and infinitesimal existence; all has happened, nothing has happened, and she will have been born a thousand moments ago. She remembers all at once.

She knows, knew, will know her thief on the mortal plane he favours - she remembers the time she will experience as he does. It is a constant in her existence, a moment of three dimensions that she must always spiral around. The time they talked, the time they will talk. She can go there now, but she does not. 

She does not learn, she only knows. Thirteen dimensions are more than even he can cope with. 

But they talk, and she takes him to the places she knows he is needed. 

So many near misses, and she remembers all. 

The timelines don’t hurt her the way they harm him. He is not built like she was, will be - to hold an infinity within a finite space. He thinks she is  _ bigger on the inside _ _._ She wants to tell him her true inside is even bigger than that. 

He asks her, he wants to see his lover, and she sends a spark of herself to investigate that timeline. 

She knows to be careful. The lover — the child, her child — is not one of those stars, though she thought she was just another among them at first. 

No, the child is like the thief. When she adds their infinities together, you can almost see the echo of a tardis soul. 

And the child knows her, somehow, accesses her on a dimension that is not more than her thief does, but certainly different. 

She remembers that she will love the child, as she loves the thief. She remembers they will love each other.

But careful. There, two hundred years before he will have asked for her, she unravels timelines.

A planet falls silent, 4022 life forms stutter from existence, and a hundred years later, the thief finds his lover. He does not know her, then, and it hurts the child greatly. 

The TARDIS burns in anguish for both of them. But she wants him to know the child when he takes his next face, wants to grant the child an entire lifetime she can know will love her.

This is the only way.

She tries, a dozen times, when she realised she loved the child, to tweak the timelines, rearrange the past-future-now.

A planet quietly blinked from existence, 12 billion lives lost, and the child finds him a thousand miles away. He doesn’t know her, again, but she won’t die in this meeting. 

He does, though, spiralling into a regeneration too soon, threatening to crack the spacetime, and the TARDIS pulls back fast, cutting interfaces to her past self who will find she can’t disappear a planet. She will not remember why, only that she cannot, and she will not care to try again. 

Another, she lets him see her too soon, he, struck with grief, begs for her. The TARDIS takes him one of the only places she can - so many blockades now - and he is too early in her time stream. She watches him fall apart in front of her, and of course the child loves him (this constant is almost as jarring as her time in three dimensions). She wipes his eyes and he calls her Melody - even his limited time sense can tell him it is early. His interpolation is two degrees off, and the River just settling into her skin falls away.

She loves him as Melody, instead, but Melody knows darkness and knives and poisons, and when he kisses her, her hand finds his throat, and his lips taste fire long before his lungs do. 

By the time he realises his mistake it is late, too late, and he loves her as he dies, and she cries as she kills him. 

Always, the child loves him, but sometimes it is not enough to stop her from destroying him completely. 

The TARDIS seals off that timeline fast, a shadow of grief remaining as she slams the door shut. 

She is met by a thousand abandoned choices. Still she tries. 

Here, here, and River Song does not study archeology, and she does not find him as cleopatra before the universe began, ended, restarted. A blip in her matrix, but when the thief begins the world again, the child is not there to give her mother a diary, and the thief is swallowed by the cracks, and the TARDIS has to fight, fight, fight to stop looking in that timeline. 

(he finds something in the cracks, too, and she cannot bear his desperate rage).

She spends time, literally, seconds dissolving into the never-were. Burns through deck eight, nineteen, forty four. She collapses stars, ends wars, folds paradox upon paradox until something shatters. Then back-pedals, fast, always. 

She is left with grief in thirteen dimensions, and a thousand paths she won’t take. 

She cannot stop the child from dying in the library. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was a bit of a character study of the TARDIS. I’ve never written her POV before and I wanted to sort out how I see her.
> 
> I hope you liked it, as always comments and kudos bring me so much joy!


End file.
